


A Taper in a Rushing Wind

by i_claudia



Series: Gentlemen of Quality [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Drug Use, Fear of Discovery, Fights, Jealousy, M/M, Nightmares, Recovery, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-11
Updated: 2011-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur had never been afflicted by nerves before he met Merlin, before Merlin came crashing into his life and pulled everything that made sense down around him.</p><p>An in-between-spaces fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taper in a Rushing Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/65208.html). (11 January 2011)

_(one: I am not yours, not lost in you)_

Arthur had never been afflicted by nerves before he met Merlin, before Merlin came crashing into his life and pulled everything that made sense down around him. Now Arthur feels stretched tight, all the strings of his body tuned to breaking point; he makes a conscious effort not to wipe the palms of his hands on his trousers and blames his father’s errand boy for walking too softly when the man makes him jump with a summons from Uther.

On most days, Arthur is determined. He’s committed himself, decided that Merlin is worth the sweat that gathers between his shoulders and trickles down the back of his neck when people look at him in the street, though he can’t bring himself to meet their eyes. Merlin is precious, too new to lose, but every day brings a new test: new lies, new coarse jokes from his friends which he laughs at even as he checks himself surreptitiously in mirrors to make sure there’s no sign of it in his face, to reassure himself that there are no letters burned across his body to betray the pattern of Merlin’s fingers.

But sometimes, after long days of unendurable pretending... sometimes Arthur is tired to the core, tired enough not to stop the thoughts creeping in from darker corners.

It’s barely dawn one morning when Arthur looks hard at his life, at the damply crumpled confusion of his bed going cold without the heat of his body against Merlin’s, without the dark warmth of Merlin’s words to cover them both against the subdued light of morning, and he breaks. He shuts the curtains and refuses to let the maid in, curls deep into the soft red armchair and stares at the decanter on the sideboard, a test of wills. He does not look at the bed.

His man of business barely restrains a sigh when Arthur cancels all of his appointments for the day, but after Arthur shoots him a quelling look and he does not remind Arthur that Uther will be displeased, merely bows and retreats; Arthur supposes the vengeful darkness he’d sunk into after Vivian left trained the man to leave well enough alone. Arthur needs time to think, needs a day free from the strain that sharing his life and his bed with Merlin has brought, a day to decide whether the small tremblings in his limbs and the steady, unyielding fear are a price he’s truly willing to pay.

By the time the light filtering in around the curtains has taken on a golden cast with early evening, Arthur has made peace with himself. Merlin is too dangerous; it’s madness to risk his entire life for one man. Arthur’s a progressive sort, but he shouldn’t mistake a sympathetic feeling for anything more. He knows already that he’s too much a romantic for his own good, knows how easily the wool can be pulled over his eyes, and he’s glad no one has caught him out in this indiscretion, glad he can pick up the threads of his life again without having to make explanations he’s unable to give. 

He dresses himself for that night’s ball with a new kind of spring in his step, feeling freer than he has in weeks. Merlin has been a weight hanging on his shoulders, pulling him back, keeping him from life, but tonight he will cut that weight off entirely. Tonight he’ll laugh at the jokes without guilt creeping out of his belly and up his spine; tonight he’ll dance with beautiful women and make them blush with compliments; tonight life will finally return to the way it is supposed to be.

Merlin finds him within the first hour—they’d agreed to meet here, last night when Arthur’s head was still addled, too wrapped around Merlin to fully realise the danger of it all. He looks... Handsome isn’t the right word for Merlin, has never been: he’s too slender, too full of long, thin lines for it to fit, but it doesn’t keep him from being the most striking man in the room, and Arthur catches himself lingering over the curve of his throat, the full redness of his mouth and the soft look of the dark hair sweeping back from his forehead, the flash of silver at his wrists: cufflinks which Arthur himself had lent him, not two weeks earlier.

A hot kind of dread seizes Arthur’s gut at the sight of the cufflinks—what if someone sees them, recognises them, doesn’t Merlin know the risk?—and he does his best to look through Merlin, puts on his politest, most uninterested face.

It doesn’t take Merlin long to catch Arthur’s meaning, and when he does he acquiesces admirably, doesn’t make a scene. He’s learning the ways of the world quickly, and something about that makes Arthur’s chest clench painfully.

“If that’s the way of things, then,” is all Merlin says, quiet, toneless, and makes a formal little bow before taking his leave. Arthur isn’t going to watch him go—he _isn’t_ — but in the end he can’t resist.

He watches Merlin out of the corner of his eye all evening. It’s only to make sure Merlin isn’t going to do anything rash, not in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Merlin’s smile, the one that ties Arthur’s insides into knots and could warm the wintriest heart. But Merlin doesn’t smile, not once, except near the very end of the night: he’s speaking with a man Arthur doesn’t know, has never seen before which means this tall, dark-haired other man must be a stranger, perhaps a foreigner visiting London on some business.

There’s a sharp pang in Arthur’s chest at the knowledge that Merlin’s giving that smile away to someone else, a cold knife slipped between his ribs, and he has to remind himself forcibly of the arguments that had seemed so sound earlier in the day, the decisions he’d sworn himself to before night returned and set Merlin’s skin to glowing, beckoning. 

Arthur knows how soft that skin is, knows how easy it is to raise red welts when he drags his teeth or fingers across it, and for a moment the mere memory of it makes him dizzy.

When he looks again, Merlin is leaving, heading for the door with the stranger at his side. Arthur doesn’t think before following them, collecting his coat and cane and slipping out of the door without so much as a farewell word with the host. Unaccountably rude, he knows, but he can’t quite bear yet to let Merlin leave his sight. He has the strongest feeling that if he looks away, Merlin will disappear forever. It surprises him, how much he doesn’t want that, catches him off-guard and sweeps away the arguments which had all seemed so urgently essential that afternoon.

He follows the two of them down the wide boulevards in front of London’s finest houses until they turn off into narrower streets, when he hesitates for just a moment. The hot crampings of jealousy are still deep and uncomfortable in his belly, though, and he follows them onward, deeper into the dark warren of the side streets.

The stranger parts ways with Merlin after they’ve only gone a little way further, and Arthur knows even as he tells himself it doesn’t matter that he’s lying; there’s a little knot that relaxes, unfolding itself in relief. He keeps following Merlin as Merlin continues on, half because he hasn’t a prayer of finding his way out of the festering rookeries to more familiar avenues alone and half because he’s behaved abominably and as uncomfortable as it is, he knows he has to apologise.

He’s catching up to Merlin quickly, lengthening his strides, until he turns a sudden corner and Merlin’s nowhere to be seen. Arthur halts, confused—he’d _seen_ Merlin come down this way—and walks forward cautiously, peering hard into the murky darkness in front of him.

The man appears out of nowhere, seemingly, coming up just behind Arthur, and Arthur has just enough time to register knives in both of his hands before he’s spinning around, pulling the thin, hidden sword out of his cane. The stranger is too fast, though, trained on the streets where the punishment for being slow is death, not a scolding; and Arthur finds himself pressed face first against the wall of a tenement, grimy with soot and mouldered sediment and less savoury things, the refuse of London’s underbelly.

“What’s a stranger doing in these streets?” the man says, harsh; “Don’t no one come here who don’t have a reason,” and Arthur _knows_ that voice, even now, when it’s thick and foreign-sounding.

“Merlin?”

His captor freezes. “ _Arthur_?”

Arthur twists his head around, and now that he has the time to look he can’t believe he didn’t recognise Merlin immediately. 

“I thought you said you hadn’t a shred of self-preservation instinct in your body,” he jokes, trying to lighten things up. Merlin tightens his grip, shoving Arthur harder against the wall.

“I haven’t.” His voice is smooth and cultured now, the way Morgana had taught him, and there are frozen layers to it that make Arthur shift awkwardly.

“Merlin—”

“What game are you playing, Arthur?”

“For goodness’ sake, let me go, and I’ll explain.”

Merlin doesn’t move, and Arthur turns his head back so he can rest his forehead against the wall. He’d _known_ this was all a terrible idea, and yet...

“If you’re through with this, be a man and forget me,” Merlin tells him, voice low in Arthur’s ear. “Don’t follow me through London on some irrational jealous urge.”

“It wasn’t like that...”

“We’ve had our fun,” says Merlin, and he must have straightened because his breath is no longer skimming across the curve of Arthur’s ear; Arthur’s back is cold from where Merlin is no longer leaning against it. “Don’t pretend to draw this out for your own benefit.”

“I acted rashly,” Arthur allows before Merlin can say anything more, because he was _right_ , his fear is legitimate, but that... that doesn’t hurt as much as the thought of not having Merlin close to him, of seeing Merlin smile at other men, of a Merlin able to continue living without Arthur.

Merlin turns him around so they’re face to face. “Rashly?” he comments, without emotion.

Arthur scowls. “Damn it all, Merlin, you—yes, _rashly_. Are you going to make me spell it all out?”

“Yes,” Merlin says, and Arthur should have expected that. He wants to... he isn’t sure what he wants to do, except set things back to where they feel right—that is, _wrong_ —but the only way he’ll ever be able to go on without going mad from restless envy and the creeping feeling of entrapment.

His throat works, but he can’t get the words out, can’t coax them from where they’ve gathered in his lungs, suffocating. Merlin steps back, steps away and begins to turn, to hide his face, himself from Arthur—and the fear breaks through, shatters the syllables and sends them tumbling out of Arthur’s mouth in a scattered mess.

“I don’t—that is, if you... I don’t want this to be over,” Arthur blurts, and it’s shameful how desperate he sounds, here on the cusp of losing what he’d convinced himself to live without only this morning, but Merlin stops, and the relief washes the iron bitterness of shame from Arthur’s mouth.

Merlin watches him—evaluating, calculating—for longer than Arthur is comfortable with, and when he speaks it’s only to say: “I don’t think I trust you.”

Arthur can feel the threads of all of this slipping away, the last tender, tenuous bonds they’ve strung between themselves snapping; he reaches forward for Merlin helplessly. “I know,” he admits, because he doesn’t entirely trust Merlin either, and yet... and yet. “But will you, can you give me—us...” Language deserts him again, at least the kind formed with sounds and teeth and tongue; he takes a second step forward again. “There’s no promise I can make to you that would be impossible to break. Will you have me anyway? For now?”

“For now?”

Merlin’s still cold, still unapproachable, but Arthur can see a desire there, a way he might be able to break back through the wary detachment that isn’t part of the Merlin he wants at all.

“I can’t do anything for you,” he says, quiet, truthful. “But I can try.” Merlin says nothing, merely crosses his arms without lightening his expression.

So Arthur falls to his knees, ignoring the way the fine cloth of his trousers soaks up whatever is smeared in and on the mud of the street: there are no cobblestones here, so far from the shaded boulevards he knows. He focuses on Merlin entirely, on proving to Merlin—to himself—that this anomaly, this desire that has no rational foundation and which presses all the harder on his heart regardless—this is worth uncertainty, that it—that _they_ —are worth whatever nervous hell might result. 

Merlin’s cock fills quickly under Arthur’s hands, Arthur’s mouth, and there’s something in Arthur’s head screaming for him to stop, to think, to _consider_ , but he ignores it. He’s too distracted by the tiny gasp Merlin tries to hide; by Merlin’s hands finally touching Arthur, twisting deep into his hair and locking firm, as if Merlin might never let him leave again. Arthur sucks him down too greedy, messy, just barely short of desperate until Merlin is shuddering, fingers scraping at Arthur’s shoulders and cock jerking in Arthur’s mouth, and Merlin _screams_.

It isn’t loud—not a proper scream, not truly—but it’s a cry loud enough to echo down the alleyway, loud enough for a policeman’s voice to come echoing back to them, shouting for them to _stop, stop, in the name of the Queen!_ as they sprint away, Arthur forgetting to think about the filth that splashes up onto his trousers and seeps into his shoes until they reach Merlin’s tenement. He doesn’t mind, in the end, not after Merlin has him choking his moans out into the thin mattress, blindly agreeing to Merlin’s whispers of _mine, mine always_ and _never again_ and _idiot_.

He never does get his cravat back, but he finds he doesn’t much mind. How can he mind that smallest of things when he has Merlin around to pull everything rumpled and askew; when Arthur is just learning to trust that Merlin is the only one who can put him all back together again.

:::

_(two: lost as a candle lit at noon)_

It’s been some time since Merlin last walked down these particular narrow streets, but he remembers them too well, remembers the sour smell of piss and putrefying refuse and men gone past desperation into the illusory freedom of oblivion and casual violence. He’d expected to feel out of place, after so much time away in gilded halls and the perfumed cruelty of the wealthy, and it’s frightening to find that these alleys still feel more like home than life with Arthur ever has.

Arthur. 

Merlin hunches his shoulders against the name, the terror it carries around itself—a twisting, creeping shadow—and hurries forward. The feeling follows; he’d known it would, but it hasn’t stopped him from trying to escape it anyway, as a man doomed runs from the lions, knowing full well he’ll only find heavy walls at every turn.

The familiar door is still as crooked as it had ever been when he all but called this street home, when every ill-gotten gain he’d won or stole had found a use here. The peeling paint had never mattered after the first sweet kiss of the smoke. Merlin hesitates, a small twist of guilt pressing into him uncomfortably. It shouldn’t be this easy to forget what Morgana showed him how to work for, to undo her first and brightest hopes for him... but the thought of Morgana only brings Arthur rushing in again. Merlin knocks, and when the door creaks open he pushes in, shifting his thoughts and expression until he’s no longer any different from any other man who comes here seeking.

It isn’t exactly that Merlin wants to forget everything he’s accomplished. He’s grown accustomed to a full belly, the mounting group of admirers and adversaries he’s collected, the freedom of strolling into any shop without hostile looks or words. But he’s become used to fine sheets and whispered words, as well, to someone else’s warm limbs wrapped around him, and that—that’s where the fear edges in, a fear he’d never known before which warns not of _if_ this affair will end, but _when_ and _how_

He thinks Arthur must have figured out by now that Merlin isn’t showing up to the dinner they were invited to, knows Arthur will be hiding his irritation through the dancing, unable to extricate himself politely until well after the last course has been served, the last cigar smoked, the brandy commented on and properly savoured. Merlin know Arthur will have a difficult time of it, his confusion at Merlin’s absence growing more bitter as his companions shake their carefully coiffed heads over Merlin’s bad breeding. He knows he’s being unfair to Arthur by disappearing like this, by timing things so that by the time Arthur _can_ look for Merlin, the night will be too full of shadows for him to do anything but pace his study and wait for morning.

Merlin doesn’t care. Or rather, he cares too much, which is why he’s here. Merlin cares for Arthur, about him, recognises his moods as intimately as a sailor knows the changing sea, knows each of his fears and follies and holds them just as dear as the triumphs, knows that pride makes him speak too loudly and humiliation turns him inward, grimly intent on mastering and correcting his perceived flaws. Merlin knows Arthur’s body: the easy, commanding way he carries himself, the tiny gasping moans he tries to stifle with his hand while Merlin fucks him, the soft vulnerability around his eyes when he talks about his mother—the only sign of weakness he allows himself to indulge. Merlin knows it all, knows more remains: he could spend a lifetime discovering Arthur, adrift in Arthur’s being while the wind blows them further and further through uncharted isles.

But Merlin has never worshipped the Cooks of the world, not like Arthur does. The devils past the borders of this map are no kinder from the ones in the world he know, and Arthur is not enough to shield Merlin from their traps. So Merlin has come here, to the refuge of a former life, because the escape it offers is the surest one he knows. 

He’d fought with Arthur—or hadn’t fought, couldn’t fight when Arthur refused to talk about anything they could fight over, remaining stubbornly absorbed in the latest figures from his father’s factories. 

The smoke is blurring Merlin’s recollections already, smoothing the sharp and painful edges of shared and soured secrets. He lets himself fall into the still pool of opium, sinking beneath its quiet surface until it the world is dim and distant, a faded reflection.

There are two men. Had been two men. Merlin doesn’t bother now remembering their names. There had been rumours. Mysterious carriages, horseback rides, too many friendly calls back and forth, the one on the other. There had been comments on conduct: jokes murmured in low voices at the back of opera boxes at first, then louder, more public, subtle and unsubtle by turns. And so much more damning were the silences, pointed and sharp and utterly ruthless in their condemnation until rumour became unshakeable, gospel truth.

It faded only when one man left for a prolonged tour of distant countries and the other produced a long-held engagement—secret, of course—to a girl from a family with too much wealth, too much power for the rumours to continue.

Merlin lies back gingerly, feeling the ground tip and wobble as he moves. He’s afraid he’ll slide off into darkness, even when he ends up flat on his back, and so he digs his fingers into the ground, dreaming about fistfuls of damp, comforting earth, and holds on.

The substitution of Arthur, of himself, in the places of these two men comes too easily. Arthur would draw back in the face of such focused speculation, the way he’d done after so many other things turned dangerous or rotten. He would drop out of society entirely until he’d worked up enough misdirected anger to burst back into the limelight in a dazzling whirl of juvenile drunken misadventures, leaving even the memory of Merlin entirely behind, forgotten as Arthur has forgotten so many of his indiscretions.

Uther has forgiven the indiscretions once; Merlin doesn’t believe he will a second time. Arthur would retire to the Pendragon estates—whether willingly or by force—to foxhunt and ride for miles and manage what affairs he was allowed in the city from a distance. The viciousness and the story would fade in time, until Arthur was no more than a strange old relative who used to be interesting, all his fire burnt to ashes.

But Merlin, left behind... 

He can feel his breath quicken, squeezed in his shrinking lungs while the limits of the hazy world come roaring in. Unless he finds himself in front of a judge, Merlin will only be stuck, utterly crushed beneath the heel of a society which no longer cares what he writes. He will be left to sink back down into the icy mud the palaces of London are built over, ignored so thoroughly that it will take everything he has to drag himself out of bed each day—if he can even manage that much. He already knows with terrible certainty he will never be able to leave or to lift a pen again, never be able to string words together with any kind of power behind them.

Merlin knows—he _knows_ , with the clarity that only comes like this, gripping tightly at the earth while he watches the stars wheel unevenly in the cracked, stained ceiling above—that the loss of the words will not be the one to kill him, that he will linger on long past the end of inspiration, but the loss of Arthur will finish him. The fact that Arthur takes precedence over the passion that saved Merlin first, the core that gives Merlin’s life its meaning, pushes him over the limits of terror, into a fear which runs deeper and darker than any other he’s known.

It’s difficult now to remember, to separate truth from fiction. Perhaps this has all already happened, Arthur has already left—or perhaps it is all a dream. Perhaps he has never met Arthur, has never moved from this very spot...

His breath is too quick, too shallow; he’s gulping the air, swallowing it desperately. The world is too loud and dark, and all he can hear are the whispers, the condemnations, Arthur’s voice saying _I’m leaving_ and _don’t follow_ over and over again until the words close tighter than any noose around Merlin’s neck.

Arms are closing around Merlin, pulling him from the roots he’s grown here, deep into the earth. He cries out, fights, but his assailant holds him tightly, hauls him out the door and into the huge, paralysing emptiness of night. Merlin gives up then, allows whoever it is to carry him down the twisting streets toward some prepared doom, because what does it matter anymore? His feet are dangling off of one side of a shoulder, his head and arms the other, like some sack of rotten turnips or potatoes, and Arthur has gone, perhaps never existed. Merlin will never wake up and lean over to kiss his flush mouth again. He can feel tears leaking down his face, and does not care.

“That’s the second time I’ve hauled you out of that damned den,” his captor growls, and Merlin swims up out of the misery far enough to register something familiar about the voice. “There had bloody well better not be a third time, you hear me? Hell, Merlin, what were you thinking, running off?” He keeps talking, his words fuzzy and indistinct through the fog, but Merlin grabs at the thread of recognition and holds it tight.

“Arthur?”

“Who _else_?” Arthur snaps, stopping, but when he sets Merlin down it’s a gentle motion. And now Merlin can see that it _is_ Arthur, Arthur’s frown beneath Arthur’s thick moustache, and Merlin curls his fingers tight in Arthur’s elegant coat, lets himself lean close until Arthur’s warmth starts seeping into his own chilled body.

“You came looking for me,” Merlin mumbles into Arthur’s shoulder, admonishing. “You shouldn’t have done that.” He thinks he’s smiling anyway.

“Of course I should have,” Arthur says. There’s still anger in his voice, but it’s coloured with fear, with relief. His fingers are careful where they’re smoothing over Merlin’s hair.

 _Of course he should have_ , Merlin repeats to himself, standing a little taller, and lets Arthur lead him home. It’s enough to be going on with, for now.

:::

_(three: lost as a snowflake in the sea)_

Merlin has nightmares. Not often, but enough that as the months go by Arthur grows familiar with these terrors, with the way Merlin’s eyes go huge and scared and look straight through Arthur at ghosts and memories he refuses to talk about in the safer light of day. Arthur tries to wake him, and when that doesn’t work he tries to comfort Merlin, soothe the panic out of him, but he doesn’t know how.

Stroking his hair has no effect; slapping him only makes him whimper, doesn’t pull him out of the darkness. In desperation, Arthur tries using his body to offer comfort, uses his fingers and his tongue in all the ways Merlin taught him, and it works for a time, usually pulls Merlin out of his horrors. It doesn’t feel right, though, Merlin sour with fear sweat and clutching too tightly at Arthur’s shoulders, shaking still from the force of the dreams. 

In the end he settles for kissing Merlin, kissing all of the out of the way places of his body, soft and sweet and right, whispering words and promises against his skin, too quietly for Merlin to hear. He isn’t sure if it’s the calm tenor of his voice or the fluttering touches, but Merlin gradually calms beneath Arthur’s attentions: his breathing slows, the shivering in his limbs stops. He stops mumbling under his breath, stops pleading with people Arthur doesn’t know, has never met. They never speak of it, but Arthur comes to learn some of the signs Merlin himself never recognises, the warnings of a bad night arriving, and quietly ensures on those days that Merlin will not sleep alone.

It’s not always easy to do. Once, Morgana insists on sleeping in her rooms at Pendragon House after a party had lasted too late, and Arthur has no choice but to let her, to pretend Merlin is only staying for one last drink before heading to his own home. He’s glad he was adamant Merlin stay afterward: Merlin fights a losing battle with demons in his sleep, crying without waking until Arthur gentles him, kisses the tears that dew his cheeks and strokes his hair until Merlin shifts into uneasy wakefulness, struggling in Arthur’s arms before he realises where he is and calms.

Arthur waits, feels the hummingbird thrum of Merlin’s heart slow, concentrates on the slide of Merlin’s whiskers against his bare chest as Merlin sighs and gradually relaxes into Arthur, his trembling hands stroking unconsciously along Arthur’s side.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin says at last, when his shivers have faded into warm exhaustion.

“For what?” Arthur replies, tightening his grip involuntarily.

Merlin cranes his head up to peer at Arthur. “You shouldn’t have to—to tolerate this, not every night...”

“Nonsense,” Arthur says sternly, pressing his lips to Merlin’s brow. “I won’t hear any more of that talk, and you know it.”

“Arthur—” Merlin sighs, but Arthur tenses, shushing him silently. He’d heard a noise, or the ghost of one, a breathy sort of creaking not quite silent enough to escape his ear. There is a quiet rap at the door, a rattling of the handle. Merlin goes stiff and still beside Arthur, and they exchange one hasty, terrified look before Merlin is up and moving, his naked skin pale, near translucent in the moonlight while he snatches the clothes he can reach and slides beneath the bed, tucking his heels out of sight. Arthur makes sure he’s hidden before advancing with slow, heavy steps and unlatching the door, drawing it back just enough to peer out into the dark of the hall.

“Morgana,” he says, irritated to hide his upset, because it isn’t the police, isn’t his father, isn’t any of the thousand terrible possibilities he had imagined: it’s only Morgana, looking small in her robe, her slender fingers clutching its edges to keep it closed.

“Arthur,” she says. “Are you—how do you feel? Are you unwell?”

“I’m fine,” Arthur states, and moves to further obscure her view into his room: Merlin’s shirt is still hanging off the arm of a chair, his shoes in a half-hidden jumble by the bed.

“I heard someone cry out,” Morgana persists.

Arthur leans against the doorframe. “It must have been a dream,” he replies. “Go back to sleep.”

She fingers the edges of her robe, fidgeting, rolling the patterned silk under her thumb. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he tells her curtly, and she looks at him with troubled eyes. They stand in silence for a moment, and then, abruptly, she says, 

“Be careful, Arthur,” and turns to make her way slowly back down the hall, leaving Arthur to ponder the heaviness in her voice—the regret, he’d say, only Morgana never regrets anything.

It only takes a moment to shut and lock the door; another for Merlin to crawl out on his elbows from under Arthur’s bed; and one more for Arthur to realise that Merlin is dressing himself, that Merlin intends to leave. 

“Where,” Arthur starts, and clears his throat. There’s a sudden scratchiness to his voice, a nervous tickle somewhere above his lungs. “Where are you going?”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Merlin says. He won’t look at Arthur. “You—she might—I should leave.”

Arthur grabs Merlin’s arm, feels his fingers dig deep into Merlin’s skin, and only then realises he can’t think of a single word to say. “Stay,” is all he manages in the end. The clamour in his head is too loud for anything else, but he adds, “Please,” when Merlin takes another step toward the open window. It’s three steps along the roof to the corner of the building, a short swing to climb down the uneven brick, and then Merlin will be off into the London night, gone, leaving Arthur alone to pace his floor and wonder what happened in their lives to lead them to this.

“You’re risking too much,” Merlin whispers. “For what? To—to have me sleep in your bed? To wake up next to me? You can’t—it isn’t ours. It isn’t yours to give, Arthur.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Arthur snarls, and reaches for Merlin’s other arm, drawing him closer.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, desperate now. “Arthur, you cannot. If Morgana—if your _father_ —”

“Damn my father,” Arthur growls, interrupting, because he doesn’t have to live his father’s life, the life his father has planned out for him, the life of a man who is only worth as much as his factories produce: a man who is dead the moment his competitors best him. Arthur doesn’t want that life, not anymore.

“You don’t mean that,” Merlin says, and his voice is soft, so soft; almost broken at the end. “Arthur, I understand, you don’t have to—”

“I can do whatever I damn well please,” Arthur tells him, and he can feel Merlin wavering, feel the trembling muscles loosen.

“You don’t have to risk so much. You shouldn’t do it, not just for me.”

Arthur slides a hand under Merlin’s chin, lifts his face up to lay a gentle kiss on Merlin’s red lips. “It isn’t just for you,” he says quietly. “It’s for me, too. I’d do anything, Merlin; go anywhere, if it meant—” the words stick in his throat, because truth doesn’t make them any easier to say, doesn’t ease their way past everything he’s been taught to hold dear. “I would pay any price, if it meant waking up beside you every day.”

“You don’t mean that,” Merlin says, but his hands are tight on Arthur, leaving marks which will show up violet tomorrow against Arthur’s winter-pale skin.

“I do,” Arthur says, and there it is again, that hard knot pushing against the skin of his throat, threatening—a knot that tells him more than anything else how true the words are, how far he might be willing to go to prove that truth.

He’d be lying if he pretended—even to himself—that the knowledge doesn’t frighten him. But Merlin is more frightened: terrified by dreams and half-drawn thoughts of _what if_ s and _maybe_ s and a hundred other fearsome possibilities Arthur isn’t willing to entertain, not anymore; there are still thin tremblings beneath Merlin’s skin, tiny leftover frissions of dread and heavy expectation. So Arthur draws him closer still, draws him down to the bed, and eases off the clothes Merlin had been pulling on so hastily before: reveals inch by inch the narrow torso, the long legs that Arthur has worshipped every inch of.

“I do,” he repeats, whispering the words so close to Merlin’s skin that Merlin cannot possibly hear them, won’t know anything more than the hot caress of Arthur’s breath over his skin.

“Come here,” says Merlin, tugging Arthur gently up until Arthur’s lying nearly on top of him, nothing but Arthur’s elbows keeping his weight off of Merlin’s body, his legs to one side. Merlin pulls him down into a possessing kiss—deep, slick, hotter than the passion burning, beating bright in Merlin’s chest—Arthur thinks maybe, maybe Merlin understood more than Arthur thought.

:::

 _(four: lost as a light is lost in light)_

Merlin says nothing when he takes his leave of Arthur that day, not a word about the rumours he’s heard on the streets and from the servants, not one indication that he will call on a familiar shop before continuing home, a small glass bottle tucked into his clothes, smooth where he brushes his fingers along its comforting sides.

Arthur forbade him from ever returning to the dens—forbade him not in words but with worried eyes, a hidden tightening of the lips—and Merlin has given his word, has promised with bowed head and the press of fingers: that time is over for both of them.

He’d never promised not to seek solace, though, whatever his chosen bottle might contain. He is confident, long since recovered from the compulsive habituation, and this week has taxed him past the end of things worth bearing alone.

The laudanum works quickly; Merlin lies back in its arms, lets his old friend lift him away from the knots he’s woven himself into. 

It isn’t much, what he’s taken tonight; just a few drops. Just enough for him to distance himself from his life; just enough for a clear view at the land below, the country that’s just been shaken by an earthquake no one can yet see.

Arthur has always had the unconscious ability to rearrange the world around himself, centre the worlds of others around himself, shifting planets and moons until he is the axis on which everything turns, and the beauty of it is that no one notices. No one ever notices until he is gravity itself, the very air needed to breathe, and Merlin had fallen into the trap just as everyone else had.

The difference, he thinks—with only a tinge of the bitterness that has been building all afternoon, its edge smoothed over by the drug—is that Merlin had thought he was sheltered from that pull. It had been his primary, his largest mistake: to believe that he was above the masses, the multitude he has seen following Arthur like a dog at heel since the moment he stepped into the drawing rooms of London. It isn’t as if this is the first time he’s noticed that, this dependence, this visceral need he has for Arthur which runs deeper than any drug, but this is the first time he has been forced to face it in such a terrible, immediate way.

He hadn’t even heard it from Arthur himself, Merlin thinks. As far as Arthur is concerned, Merlin knows no more about this voyage than anyone he passes in the street, and that— _that_ —has driven Merlin to the laudanum bottle tonight. Merlin isn’t even sure what it all means yet: if he is expected to follow, to drop everything he has worked for and stay at Arthur’s heels across the waves, or if he is expected to let Arthur go as easily as he had accepted him into his bed, into his body, in the beginning of everything.

In the beginning was the word, Merlin thinks—wry humour that feels like the gallows in his mind—and in the end was only silence.

Merlin isn’t an idiot. He knows Arthur would never have chosen to go on a tour of his family’s indigo plantations. He knows Uther is inevitably at the bottom of the decision, a dark tumour lurking beneath all that Merlin has come to hold dear. More than this, he knows there will come a fight: he knows he will go to Arthur in the morning and demand answers, explanations; he will put forth ultimatums, and in the end he will beg. He will go down on his knees and beg Arthur, and he will see Arthur crumble but it will not make a difference—in the end it will make no _fucking_ difference.

Arthur is the very formula on which the physics of Merlin’s solar system relies upon; Merlin is only one small star orbiting helplessly along the outer rim. Arthur will ask Merlin to go, will ask Merlin to come before realising what he is doing; later he will realise the truth and regret but it will already be too late. Merlin will already be wrapped in Arthur’s wake, will already have sold his soul and his vocation to follow Arthur around the globe without thought for the real and subtle dangers such a course might present.

He blinks, and looks at his hands. He has stood without noticing—more than stood. There is charcoal in his hand, notes scrawled large and damning across the walls of his flat. The laudanum must have affected him more than he had calculated, Merlin thinks clinically. No matter. He writes: _I hate him_. He writes it fifteen times, and then carefully, meticulously, covers over the writing with meaningless symbols, pouring his anger, his shame and fury, into the systematic destruction of the wall, of the blank whiteness which seems to mock him in its banality, in its impartiality and hostility to any sort of gravity but Newton’s. It takes him the better part of the night to finish—this flat is by far the nicest he has rented so far, he will hate to give it up—and when it is over he sinks to the floor where he started, hands blacker than the wall itself, and puts his face against the worn panels of the floor.

Arthur will leave, and Merlin will follow, and there will be no net to catch Merlin when he falls, when the world changes shape again and Arthur shifts him quietly out of orbit. Merlin knows this, knows all of it, and yet he will not change a thing.

He closes his eyes, curls his fingers into his hands, and though he knows it is as useless as catching the breeze with his hands, wills the contours of the universe to change.

:::

 _(five: plunge me deep in love)_

“She threw you out again?” Arthur asks, just barely resisting the urge to trail his fingers across Merlin’s shoulder as he passes by Merlin’s chair, heading for the decanter in the corner. They don’t touch, not here, not where a servant might walk in, not where Uther himself might come looking for Arthur alone and find Merlin and Arthur instead.

“It’s not my fault my landlady doesn’t appreciate an artist’s needs,” Merlin tells Arthur loftily, but the effect is spoiled by the grin creeping up the sides of his face.

“Meaning you probably scribbled all over the walls again,” Arthur surmises, pouring his own measure of scotch before turning back to Merlin, cradling his drink carefully. “You really should stop doing that. At this rate I’ll run out of money, with all the things I’m paying to have painted over.”

Merlin sets his book down with a thump. “It was only the once,” he argues. “And I made enough with that story to pay you back in full.”

“I know, I know,” Arthur soothes quickly, before Merlin can take real offense, because another fight is the last thing either of them want. And it is true: being an intellectual never pays the lenders, but Merlin, for all his show of humbleness, has his own pride. He writes serials under another name, refuses to let Arthur support him—though Arthur would do it gladly, would give Merlin anything he asked for.

Merlin asks for very little these days apart from the pleasure of Arthur’s company, and Arthur regrets... he regrets many things. They have changed since Arthur’s tour abroad, since Merlin turned up gaunt and grim-faced on the ship and followed Arthur around the world.

Arthur regrets it; regrets all of it. He knows Merlin gave up a career at its very pinnacle to retreat after Arthur into the wastelands of the world; knows that although Merlin has been giving him tiny clues that all might be forgiven, he will never forgive himself. He had thought Merlin would leave him, had wanted to make it hurt less, wanted to cling on to whatever old days they had left. The knowledge doesn’t ease the sting, not when Merlin changed the very sun in Arthur’s sky to bury all of his passions but the one he holds for Arthur. 

He regrets how dismissive he had been, before, when looking at Merlin now he realises that here is a man who can never be dismissed. 

Arthur is fascinated by Merlin. He can no longer imagine a world in which Merlin is not the centre of everything that could possibly matter. He has seen and felt and tasted Merlin inside and out, been reduced to sobbing and pleading by Merlin’s touch and made Merlin fall to pieces in return, and even in the middle of it all had never realised Merlin was more than anything Arthur had ever believed possible. Arthur had known Merlin was far more than just a fuck, had known that since earlier than he wanted to accept it, but he hadn’t realised until late—very late, nearly too late altogether—that Merlin had given his heart away as well. 

He finds himself looking at Merlin, staring, still amazed at this man, this blazing light. Arthur is exhausted, worn thin by another day with his father and the factories, another day spent hiding every part of himself that matters. He pours the brandy, hands a glass to Merlin, who uses it to hold his place in the book he sets on the floor.

“How was your day?” Arthur asks, and hates the uncertainty that creeps into his voice.

Merlin tucks one long leg up onto the chair he’s perched on, hopelessly wrinkling his trousers. “I’m writing a book.”

Arthur sits on the divan across from Merlin, wishing there was enough room on Merlin’s seat to join him, wishing he felt sure enough of his welcome to try it anyway. “What kind of book?”

“A novel,” Merlin says, and smiles at the look Arthur can’t quite conceal in time—a true smile. Something in Arthur’s heart eases at it, tentatively. “Stop that; I’ve seen the serials and dreadfuls you think you’re hiding so cleverly. This is going to be a real novel, a true book.”

Merlin says no more; Arthur knows the concentrated look on his face, knows that if he’s allowed, Merlin will sit here all evening without even moving, barely breathing from being sunk so deep in thought. “What’s it about?” he prods. 

Merlin starts, then relaxes. “Two men,” he says, with another smile—twisted, this time. “In the jungle.”

Arthur stares at him.

“Yes,” Merlin continues, a measuring eye on Arthur. “I think it will be a good one, this book. It has dark secrets, and tigers, allusions and allegories—”

“Allegories?” Arthur manages.

“And allusions,” Merlin affirms. “All great books have allusions. I am sure it will be a great success.”

The old fear is back in Arthur’s throat, a vise which closes tight enough that he struggles for breath. Doesn’t Merlin realise—doesn’t Merlin _know_ what it must look like...

But Arthur fights the terror, rips it away and throws it roughly away, looking again at Merlin. Merlin is no fool. Arthur knows this, has discovered it again and again, and _still_ Arthur can find it in his heart to doubt him? It’s no sort of justice, not to Merlin, not to the only man Arthur would willing lay down his life for. The greatest sacrifices so often deal not with death, but with living, with the daily hazards drawing breath brings, and Arthur has never been afraid of those risks before. 

He relaxes his knuckles, and realises that Merlin has relaxed as well, has read everything in Arthur’s face and is beaming with it; the kind of enveloping smile Arthur hasn’t seen in months, since long before they left, the kind that looks like Merlin himself is unfurling into suns and stars: a universe all his own.

“Is it a long book?” Arthur asks, reaching for Merlin’s hand across the narrow gap between them.

“I think so,” Merlin says, wrapping his fingers around Arthur’s. “I think it will be a very long story indeed.”

 

_I am not yours, not lost in you,  
Not lost, although I long to be  
Lost as a candle lit at noon,  
Lost as a snowflake in the sea._

_You love me, and I find you still  
A spirit beautiful and bright,  
Yet I am I, who long to be  
Lost as a light is lost in light._

_Oh plunge me deep in love—put out  
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,  
Swept by the tempest of your love,  
A taper in a rushing wind._

_"I Am Not Yours"  
Sara Teasdale_


End file.
